Revive Me, Part Two: The Affair (New Haven, #3)

by J.L. Seegars

I’ve always known I have the most supportive people in my corner, but I’m not always the best at letting them be there for me. It’s something I’m working on.

“When they come, no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, don’t try to stop them. Let them out. Yell if you need to. Fall on the floor and curl into a ball if that feels right. Just promise that you’ll give yourself over to it, that you’ll make time to feel it.”

“Because even when I’m not getting along with your daughter, I still end up treating her a million times better than you have. Because you’re not a good mother. Because you’re not even a good human.”

Damn…

Mallory and I weren’t good together. We were great. We were a collision of destiny and inevitability. We were fate personified. We were everything.

His scent hits me first, whipped around by another gust of wind that transports me back to the days when leather and earth meant comfort and safety. Now it just smells like heartbreak. Like betrayal and stolen futures.

but I am sure of one thing. I don’t want to hear a single thing that is about to come out of his mouth.

“I don’t know how to let you go.” The statement is a half whisper, half laugh, but there’s nothing amusing about the way his jaw clenches after he says it. He shakes his head like he hates himself for speaking those words.

Nic’s feelings for Sloane have always been an open secret between us. Something known but never spoken out loud. Besides him, I was the only person in our circle of friends that knew the truth about them. After all, I was the one who took him to the party where they met. I watched them leave together, saw the future he was hoping for with her written in his eyes.

Omg

“Truth or dare, princess?” “Truth.” “Do you want to come up to my room with me?” “Yes.”

TROUBLE

“Maybe they were cool with rushing because they didn’t have anything in front of them that was worth slowing down for, but I’d stop the world for you. I’d freeze time if it meant I would never run out of opportunities to look at you.”

“Because from the second I found out Eric was gone, all I wanted to do was hold you long enough to absorb your grief. To take every ounce of the pain you’ve been holding and carry it for you. When I boarded that plane, I knew I had no right to want any of those things, to want anything from you, but I want this, princess. I want to be here for you. Will you let me?”

“That’s what happens when you try to go over it instead of through it.”

“And I wanted you. I needed you. I needed you so badly I wished for you, Chris.”

“Do you know how desperate you have to be to wish for someone who destroyed you, to crave their presence even when you know it’s only going to cause you pain?”

“Any reality without you in it is misery, princess.”

“Pot roast, rice, some macaroni and cheese…” “And candied yams,”

It’s the magnetism that exists between two people even when there are a million other people in the room. It’s knowing exactly how many steps it will take you to get to them no matter where they are in relation to you.

Chris is one of the few people in the world that I can do this with. Simply exist. No expectations for conversation or demands for attention. Just easy acceptance, anchored by the feel of his warm palm resting on my thigh.

“The first time I kissed you, everything before you ceased to exist. Your taste, your touch, your smell, eradicated it all. You erased me, turned me into a clean slate, a blank page that only you could fill in. There was nothing before you, Mallory, and if I have my way there will be nothing after you. You are the first woman I’ve ever loved. The only one I’ve ever chased.”

“If I run are you going to chase me?” “I’d chase you to the ends of this Earth, Mallory.”

“You taste good, don’t you, baby? Now you know why I want to spend the rest of my life on my knees with my face between your thighs.”

there’s nothing shameful about grieving, about feeling deeply. There’s power in owning these feelings, peace in acknowledging that they exist.

“Tell me what it was like then, Chris. Because I want to know how we went from planning to spend the rest of our lives together to you proposing to Bubble Head Barbie!”

Neither of these dates is correct. The first one is just a day after Teresa was born, and the other is somewhere around the time I graduated high school.

Wtf

“We won’t ever be done, princess. If we’re both here on this Earth, breathing, living, existing, then we are happening. Nothing is ever going to stop me from loving you.”